Many European Jews Will Not Be Able to Return Home After War, Says Refugee Director

July 23, 1943

London (Jul. 22)

Dr. Charles Uhlman, Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, today declared that in view of the conditions that will prevail in much of Europe after the war, it will be impossible to return thousands of Jews to their places of origin and, therefore, havens must be found for them elsewhere.

Addressing a meeting of the Agudas Israel organization here, Dr. Uhlman said that “I cannot conceive of a mass return of Jews to the devastated portions of Central Europe, the youth of which has been permeated with the Nazi philosophy.” The United Nations, he stressed, would be “betraying the cause for which they are fighting if they compel any refugees to return to these lands against their will.”

The Commissioner expressed the hope that a “wider view of (British) imperial policy will prevail and that Palestine will be kept open for immigration.” Some of the British dominions, he said, have also learned during the war that they cannot “remain isolated in a world of migration.”